Aurora Station, the luxury space hotel in orbit will be opened in 2022: Report

It seems that in the future people will get a new orbital destination to spend their holidays. Because a new startup company is now planning to build a luxury hotel in orbit on the year 2022. As per the information, Orion Span will send the Aurora Station in 2021 and it will be opened for the guests in 2022. Stating more about it Frank Bunger, CEO and Founder of the Orion Span stated, “We are launching the first-ever affordable luxury space hotel.” He informed about this at Space 2.0 Summit which was held in San Jose, California on 5th April.

As per the information, for a 12-day stay at the luxury hotel, Aurora Station will cost around $9.5 million which is less than the cost of traveling to the International Space Station. Seven people who had traveled to the ISS from 2001 to 2009, spent around $20 million to $40 million for eight trips. These trips were arranged by Space Adventures, a Virginia-based company using Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

The Aurora Station’s cabin size will be same as the private jet’s cabin. It will have 5,650 cubic feet of pressurized space. It will 43.5 feet long and 14.1 feet wide. If compare with the ISS, it is 357 feet long and 32,333 cubic feet of pressurized volume. Simultaneously it can easily hold around six residents with two professional crew members. The station will be placed into 200-mile-high orbit. Bunger further added, “There has been innovation around the architecture which has made it modular and is easy to use with better automation technology.” If things go as per planning, then in future the company will expand the size of Aurora Station.

Before going to this luxury space hotel, one will have to pass a three month of pre-flight training. Through the training, guests need to complete an online certification program and will go through in-person training which will be given at a facility in Houston. After that, they can only be eligible to travel to Aurora Station. The company has started accepting refundable deposits of $80,000.

However, for now, the question is how Orion Span will deal with funding and logistics for this project. As per the sources, the project is now developing in self-funding and there are only two investors. In the next two or three months, the company will start holding meetings for investment. However, the company aims to enable everyone to get access to space and provide facilities at a lower cost.